five W's in English

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{
  "etymology_text": "From the initial letters.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "five W's pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English pluralia tantum",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The questions who, what, when, where and why, useful in gathering information and solving problems."
      ],
      "id": "en-five_W's-en-noun-6ArScfbT",
      "links": [
        [
          "who",
          "who"
        ],
        [
          "what",
          "what"
        ],
        [
          "when",
          "when"
        ],
        [
          "where",
          "where"
        ],
        [
          "why",
          "why"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "5W"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "five W's and one H"
        },
        {
          "word": "five W's and an H"
        },
        {
          "word": "5W1H"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "five W's"
}

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{
  "etymology_text": "From the initial letters.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "five W's pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "5W"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English pluralia tantum",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The questions who, what, when, where and why, useful in gathering information and solving problems."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "who",
          "who"
        ],
        [
          "what",
          "what"
        ],
        [
          "when",
          "when"
        ],
        [
          "where",
          "where"
        ],
        [
          "why",
          "why"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "five W's and one H"
        },
        {
          "word": "five W's and an H"
        },
        {
          "word": "5W1H"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "five W's"
}

[Show JSON error data ▼] [Hide JSON error data ▲]

{
  "called_from": "form_description/20250107",
  "msg": "Form tags without form: desc='plural plural-only', tagsets=[('plural', 'plural-only')]",
  "path": [
    "five W's"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "noun",
  "title": "five W's",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"five W's" meaning in English

Noun